Recently, an IC card using a non-contact type communication method which performs necessary functions each time the IC card reaches to a card reader has been widely employed in various fields, in addition to a contact-type communication method in which the IC card is inserted in the card reader to perform the necessary functions. The IC card is employed in a mobile device such as a smartphone to perform a user authentification, and the mobile device employed in the mobile device has provided only a function of contact type communication. Recently, the smartphone has used an NFC (Near Field Communication) technology to enable a non-contact communication service.
The conventional RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) method passively processes data while being provided with power by an RF field generated from outside. On the other hand, the NFC technology may enable a user to conveniently use the non-contact communication service even in a mobile device such as the smartphone using non-contact communication technology. Further, a device for the NFC may be a kind of a passive RFID tag and may directly generate an RF filed to input and output information from/to the RFID of outside.
However, the NFC technology is implemented to allow only the non-contact communication technology and an IC card serving as a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card which is necessary to charge a mobile device is separately loaded therein. Further, a separate serial interface using the SWP (Single Wire Protocol) is employed to communicate between the IC card and an NFC chip. Furthermore, the SIM card internally has security function in hardware to securely store important information of a customer and that which is necessary for encryption.
Likewise, in order to provide the non-contact communication service, a secure element serving as a security storage device in hardware which enables customer information and the important information necessary for the data encryption to be securely stored is required.
The secure element described above may be created using a module within the SIM card, or may be created using a separate chip. However, functions required for the non-contact communication service are dispersed in various chips in any of the above cases, which cause time to be unnecessarily consumed for communicating between the various chips and power consumption of the mobile device to become high.
In particular, in order to provide the non-contact communication service in the mobile device such as the smartphone, various chips need to be provided within the mobile device. As a result, power consumption of the mobile device becomes high and service efficiency thereof becomes deteriorates due to communication between the various chips.
Therefore, it is necessary to implement an apparatus for the NFC, which is capable of minimizing the power consumption for the non-contact communication service and maximizing efficiency of power management.